


Sisyphus and Tantalus

by okapi



Category: And Then There Were None (TV 2015), And Then There Were None - Christie, CHRISTIE Agatha - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, F/M, Ghost Sex, Ocean Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26803540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Vera and Philip tease each other.Post-canon!Should be considered SPOILERS for the film and novel. A tiny bit of plot at the end, but mostly sex in the ocean.For Kinktober 2020: Day 3: Orgasm Delay/Denial
Relationships: Vera Claythorne/Philip Lombard
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Kinktober 2020





	1. Vera as Sisyphus

**Author's Note:**

> I purposefully didn't tag for everything to preserve some suspense, but this is post-canon which should tell you something. And the final chapter will tie in to the end of the novel/film. So spoilers!

“Let me come!”

“No, I think I’m going to keep you here, on the edge, for a while.”

“For how long?”

“Until something better comes along.”

“Oh!”

The ocean waves slapped at their shoulders, and they bobbed together.

Vera clung to Philip. Her arms were wrapped round his neck and her legs round his hips. She was naked. So was he. Her hair was plastered to her face, but not in the usual tiresome way.

Philip kissed her, long and deep, lots of tongue, lots of teeth, everything she craved. He was strong and ruthless. His hands might have been coarse, but they were clever, too. Precise. They knew how to tie, and untie, many things.

He was teasing his clit like he knew exactly what he was doing. His movements were slowing now. Vera’s hips jerked in protest. She tried to climb a bit higher up his body. She wanted more. Just a little bit more and she was certain that she would tip over into bliss.

“I’m close to the top. Like that cursed fellow with the boulder. So close to the top. Let me.”

“No.”

Philips deliberately withdrew his hand, his fingers, the ones that had been teasing her, toying with her, gently at first, around and around, and then moving closer and closer, and faster…

He took them away.

“No!”

The cold water without his touch was a brutal slap to the most sensitive part of Vera’s being. Her mind rebelled, her body screamed, but Philip’s vise grip on her hips had her trapped, paralysed, in a most cruel way. He was deliberately preventing her from seizing that one, last, tiny modicum of friction that she needed.

She was his unwilling captive.

Vera slid her hands to Philip’s upper arms. She sank her red-lacquered nails into his flesh like sharp, pointed teeth. If Philips felt it at all, he showed no signs.

“The summit is right there. Give me what I need, damn you!”

“No.”

The waves lifted and lowered them. The briny stench of sea and shore and maritime debris filled Vera’s nostrils; she felt them flare like a startled horse’s, taking in more air than she thought her lungs could hold.

Suddenly, thinking she might wrench herself free of Philip completely and take matters into her own hands, Vera tried to fight her way out of grasp, but it was futile.

Her battle strength ebbed all at once, and she felt herself sliding, sliding, sliding, down the slope, away from climax, from bliss.

Philip was her anchor. He was also her snare.

Her lover. Her prison.

“If I put my mouth to you.”

Vera groaned. “I’d come on your tongue, on your lips, hell, on your teeth. Give me your shoulder. Your knee. God, your bloody head on a platter. I don’t care, I tell you. I’ll rub myself to Hell on any piece of you.”

“Hell?”

“Heaven? I don’t care.” Vera’s nerves were vibrating erratically, some weakening, some still strong. It was jarring, like being half-way down the mountain with the boulder, not certain whether she was going to resume her pushing toward the crest or allow herself to be overrun and crushed in the trough.

“If I put my finger inside you.”

“Fingers.”

“If I put my fingers inside you.”

Vera clenched round the words. “With just a brush of your thumb.” She bit the slope between his neck and his shoulder. She bit it hard. She meant it to hurt. She meant it to bleed.

“You’re a fighter, Vera. Such a fighter.” He was kissing her neck, and she could hear his smile in that rich, earthy chuckle. She felt it against her damp skin.

She wasn’t smiling or laughing. She wanted to tear him apart with her bare hands. She wanted to destroy him.

“Why? Why won’t you let me come?”

She wouldn’t cry. They were swimming in a sea of tears. and Vera Claythorne refused to let a single one of her own join the mix.

“If I put my cock in you.”

Vera grunted.

Philip pulled back and loosed his hold on her. She floated towards him; the inch or so that separated them had seemed so much longer when she couldn’t have it. Her body slotted against his mechanically. Her lust was built, piled high and thick, but somehow, now, also locked. Or dammed.

Damned.

Like Vera. Like Philip.

“May I kiss you, Miss Claythorne?”

Vera didn’t reply. She simply put her closed, dead lips to his. He swallowed her mouth. Disgusted, she let him.

“Oh, no. No, no.” He launched her wholesale out of the water. Rivulets gushed down her torso. He was helping her, pushing her up the grade, toward the peak. He was murmuring into her cleavage. “Forgive me.”

She expected him to gnaw on her breasts, and it took a while, maybe years, before she realised that he wasn’t. He was kissing the skin on the left side, the skin covering her heart.

And then those brown eyes met hers and something was silently exchanged. It might have been forgiveness or mercy. But it was probably something uglier but much more useful.

Whatever it was, it was enough to be getting on with.

Once more, he sent her up, up, up in the air with his powerful arms and twisted her like a little girl’s bonnet ribbon and allowed her to fall back into the surf with him.

Beneath the waves, Vera’s legs bent and slotted round him. His hands dropped in front of her, forearms resting on her thighs. The sea, for once, seemed to be helping, holding her up, holding them together. 

Their hands were together.

She threw her head back and laughed the word.

Together.

His fingers on her clit, her hand guiding him. His fingers in her cunt, her hand on his wrist, thrusting him deeper. Each push-and-pull was a single step, marching, steadily, unerringly, to the…

“There, my girl. There.”

Vera dissolved as pleasure overwhelmed, rent her asunder.


	2. Philip as Tantalus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philip as Tantalus (to Vera's Sisyphus)

Philip thrust one, twice, three times into her warm, tight, welcoming cunt.

“God, you feel good.”

Vera giggled, her breasts jostling with the staccato breath.

She was half in, half out of the water. So was he. To have slid into her as easily as he had, he ought to have needed something. He wondered, briefly, why he hadn’t, why it was so easy. Water wasn’t a natural lubricant, he knew that.

But he didn’t have long to contemplate the circumstance for Vera was wriggling away, like a fish thrashing itself off the hook, and like a fish, she was swimming fast and free, one with the water. He marveled at her for a moment, the ease with which she moved. She was like a mermaid.

Philip was not so agile, but he was stronger, at least on land.

He followed, but it was difficult.

It was difficult to follow with a cock as hard as his, but he managed. He caught her again and dragged her to the shore again and pinned her beneath him again.

He was thirsty, parched, drier than he ever been in his life. He needed her.

“You’re my water.”

She laughed. Those blue, blue eyes shining like, not like the sea, never like the sea, but rather like a cloudless summer sky, a picnic sky, a sky that might be dotted with kites or children’s lost balloons.

“There’s water everywhere.” Her voice was beautiful, unguarded, without guile or fear.

“But not a drop to drink.” He got her legs apart and then, once again without aide or preamble, sank back into her.

“Panting hart. Cooling stream.”

Now why had he said that? What was it even from? The Bible? Probably the Bible.

“Not yet.” Her voice was that teasing, singsong of early childhood.

“Blast you!”

She’d gotten loose again and was making for the open water, and he was still thirsty.

He chased her.

He was so hard, so wretchedly hard, and so ready for her. He squeezed his eyes shut and flung himself against the waves.

He sank beneath the choppy surface. He swam.

Still blind, he found her and dragged her back to shore. She was much heavier than before and much more solid, unwieldy, even but the breasts and body were the same. 

He threw her once more on the sand. She made a noise. It might have been a grunt or a thud. 

He felt, rather than saw, the tide coming in. Or was it going out? He didn’t care.

The sand beneath them was slipping away.

He was thirsty, and he wanted to fuck.

He didn’t even pry her legs apart. He simply plunged his cock into the hole.

He thrust. And thrust.

But he was still thirsty.

She wasn’t as warm or welcoming as before, but he was so thirsty and she was his water.

If he could just break her open, the fresh sweet water would pour out and he could drink his fill and never be thirsty again.

She was laughing. She was laughing at him. The sound was coming from behind him.

Philip opened his eyes and gasped in horror.

The thing beneath him wasn’t Vera. It wasn’t even a woman. It was a figurehead that had been ripped from the bow of a ship.

He got clumsily to his feet and turned around.

Vera was treading water a few yards from him, bobbing in the waves. Her smile was wide, and her eyes were sparkling.

“You’re my water!”

He was in agony. He was tortured.

“Come and get me then!”

Philip swept the hair from his face. He stood there, staring at her for the period of three very deep, very grounding breaths. He found the last reserves of his strength, gave her a quick nod, then dove into the surf.

In a nutshell, he got her. He wrapped his arms around her, and they sank together.

Their lips met under the sea. It was a chaste kiss for they were both smiling.

He released her body and found her hand, and tethered, they made for the shore.

“Vera.”

“I know.”

“I’m so thirsty.”

“Drink.”

He slipped into her, and she wrapped her legs round his waist.

He let out a shuddering breath. She wouldn’t try to get away again. He turned his head and saw the figurehead being lifted up and carried away by the waves.

He pulled out and thrust back into Vera’s cunt.

Her hands were on his shoulders, and her back was arched, her beautiful breasts on display. He bottomed out and laid his forehead on her chest and breathed. He kissed her skin. He licked it, too, but just once.

It was salty, and his lips were already chapped to bleeding.

He cried out in frustration and began to thurst harder and harder. With every movement, they seemed to sink deeper into the sand, but Philip didn’t care.

He was close.

He was close to water.

He pumped in and out of her. She was still smiling, her eyes still shining.

“More.”

“More.”

He rutted furiously, and soon they were buried in a shallow grave of their own making, or rather Philip’s making, the digging produced by his back-and-forth movements.

Without ceasing to fuck her, he lifted his head and extended his tongue into the air.

He could feel the first drops.

Rain.

It was rain.

Of course, it was.

His desire pooled and hardened and burst like an explosion.

Like a summer storm.

He fucked her through his climax, his head thrown back, his mouth wide to catch the falling drops. 

The storm was heavy, unleashing torrents of cold, clean, potable, potent water.

Philip Lombard drank. And he fucked.

And felt himself redeemed, washed clean.

“Vera!”

“I am here.”

She clenched round him, milking the last drops of pleasure from his body. He convulsed and gave her what her body demanded.

He swallowed the rain and felt every fibre of his being slowly restored.

His torture was over.


	3. Revenge of the Damned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vera and Philip realize what has happened.

“Philip.”

They were twined, bobbing the waves, kissing and touching. She had been stroking his cock while he toyed with her clit, but he realised her movements had stopped. She’d drawn her hand away.

She was looking at something. He followed her gaze to the body on the beach.

His body, grey with a hole in his chest.

“You’re dead.”

He kissed her shoulder. “You shot me, remember? With my own gun.” He added hastily, “You were frightened and worn raw.”

He felt and saw her chest rise and fall as memory dawned inside her. He held her just a little tighter.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, my girl.” He brushed his lips up and down the length of her neck.

“Is it?”

He pulled back and met her gaze. He frowned. It was okay, but that wasn’t what he was thinking.

“Of course, it is, but if you are here…”

“I hanged myself.”

The words were like another bullet to Philip’s chest. For a few moments, he couldn’t speak. His grip on her faltered as he looked toward the land, catching the faintest shadow of a roof peaking out from the cliffs.

“I went back to the house and hanged myself in my room. There was a rope tied to a hook. There was a chair. It was all ready for me. Cyril was there, watching me. I felt his eyes on me.”

“Oh, my girl.” He kissed her, long and hard, trying to take her pain into himself.

Finally, he pulled away.

The gulls were cawing in a strange symphony overhead.

Philip’s eyes darted towards the cliff, where he saw movement, and then a figure he recognised.

“Wargrave!”

Vera twisted her head.

Justice Wargrave was standing on the cliff.

Vera was stammering. “He’s…he’s…”

“He’s alive! Bastard! I was right from the beginning!”

The arm of the figure swung high, and something flew to through the air and made a plop in the waves.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

They swam side by side until they reached the bottle.

“There’s a note inside,” Philip observed. He studied it, trying, and failing, to touch it.

“A confession?”

“Maybe.”

“What kind of person puts a confession to ten murders in a bottle!”

“A madman.”

Vera curled at his side. “If I hadn’t hanged myself, he would’ve done it.” 

Philips slid his arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. Then he turned his attention back to the bottle. After a bit of trial and error, he discovered he could move the bottle by moving the water around it.

A shot rang out.

“Philip!”

“He’s not the kind to allow himself to be taken alive. Come on, my dear. We’ve got a mission.”

“What?”

“We’re going to get this bottle safely to the nearest boat.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know.” He quirked his lips into a smile he hoped was softly wolfish. “Perhaps we’ll find a nice bungalow to haunt.”

She smiled and brought her forehead to his. 


End file.
